40 YEARS AGO TONIGHT -- on Aug. 8, 1974, at 9:01 p.m. -- President Richard M. Nixon announced from the Oval Office: “I have never been a quitter. To leave office before my term is completed is abhorrent to every instinct in my body. But as President, I must put the interest of America first. America needs a full-time President and a full-time Congress, particularly at this time with problems we face at home and abroad. To continue to fight through the months ahead for my personal vindication would almost totally absorb the time and attention of both the President and the Congress … Therefore, I shall resign the Presidency effective at noon tomorrow. Vice President Ford will be sworn in as President at that hour in this office. …

“When I first took the oath of office as President 5½ years ago, I made this sacred commitment, to ‘consecrate my office, my energies, and all the wisdom I can summon to the cause of peace among nations.’ As a result of these efforts, I am confident that the world is a safer place today … This, more than anything, is what I hope will be my legacy to you, to our country, as I leave the Presidency. To have served in this office is to have felt a very personal sense of kinship with each and every American. In leaving it, I do so with this prayer: May God's grace be with you in all the days ahead.” http://to.pbs.org/1vkQsld

BOB WOODWARD emails Playbook: “One intense week with reliable and semi-reliable reports Nixon would resign -- no, he would not resign, yes, he would. Up and down, up and down. Yes, maybe, no. Barry Goldwater, Republican conscience of the Senate and back-channel friend of Post editor Ben Bradlee, told Ben, ‘He's going to resign if you don't f.... it up by saying he is going to resign!’ Ben wisely held his fire. Carl Bernstein and I watched the resignation speech and ate bologna sandwiches.

“Carl said it was one hell of a story about how Nixon made the decision, and thus our second Watergate book, ‘The Final Days.’ Up and down was only a small part of the story, we and our terrific assistants Scott Armstrong and Al Kamen learned. And now, 40 years later, we still live in the world of ‘reliable and semi-reliable reports.’ It is the big challenge for our business, and we mostly get ‘only a small part of the story.’ If that.”

CARL BERNSTEIN tells Playbook by phone: “Bob and I were both in the Post newsroom [for Nixon’s speech]. The newsroom didn’t have a lot of people in it, because we pretty much knew that the president was going to announce that he was resigning. Mrs. Graham – Katharine Graham – came down from her office. There were a couple of television sets put on desks. And she said, ‘No gloating,’ in a very serious way. Nobody was about to gloat, because that was hardly the atmosphere.

“There was food that had been placed out. Bob and I grabbed a couple of slices of pizza and sat on the floor [of a small office – Carl says it was ‘like an assistant national editor’s office – not one of the big ones.’] We were the only two people in the room. … We were aware that we had a real role in what had happened. My feeling was just one of total awe. The nation had gone through this, and now it seemed it was finally going to end. … The whole system worked. The press had done its job.”

ELIZABETH DREW – then of The New Yorker, and author “Washington Journal: Reporting Watergate and Richard Nixon’s Downfall,” reissued this spring with a new afterword -- emails Playbook: “It was an odd and scary situation — Watergate was scary to the end. The scary part now was we didn’t know what he might do — might he make some irrational act, some sort of lashing out? The Secretary of Defense felt compelled to tell the generals to not accept any military order that came from the White House and not through him. We talked to the politicians and people who might know Nixon pretty well — few knew him very well -- but everyone was guessing. We listened to the radio for bulletins. There was no cable news then, no Internet, so we talked on the phone and listened to the radio and waited for the evening papers … and the network television news. We couldn’t know what to believe.

“Finally on the 8th I was working at home, and over the radio came the news that Helen Thomas, then of UPI, had written a bulletin saying the president would resign. It was a relief and it was numbing -- we’d never had a president removed before, and there was something upsetting about it. Like him or not, the president is our one president. I think we had more respect for the office then than exists now. I watched his speech that night and his farewell to his staff with even greater fascination than before: Nixon was the most interesting political figure of my lifetime.” “Washington Journal,” $23.34 on Amazonhttp://amzn.to/1pG5OLw

… WashPost banner, “Nixon Resignation Seen Near: Decision Expected To Be Announced In Next Few Days,” by Lou Cannon and Carroll Kilpatrick (A1 sidebar, “Ford Staff Mapping Transition Plan,” by David S. Broder and Jules Witcover) …

9 A.M. ON MSNBC: “‘The Daily Rundown’ is doing a special show to mark the 40th anniversary of Nixon's resignation. … Chuck [Todd] sat down with … Fmr. Sen. Bob Dole, R-KS … Rep. John Conyers, D-MI … Fmr. WH counsel John Dean … CBS reporter Dan Rather and print reporter Elizabeth Drew … The show will also air archival NBC footage from that day featuring then White House Correspondent Tom Brokaw and Anchor John Chancellor.”

BREAKING -- NBC: “Savannah Guthrie announced this morning on NBC's TODAY that Monday is her last day at work before going on maternity leave. TODAY will give Guthrie a special send-off Monday with many surprises.”

WHITE HOUSE ARRIVAL LOUNGE: Antoinette Rangel returned yesterday as Deputy Director of Hispanic Media, after spending the summer interning in U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara's office in Manhattan. She also continues to work on her law degree at Georgetown.

COMMERCE CHIEF OF STAFF -- Secretary Penny Pritzker emails staff: “Wendy Anderson [will] be my new chief of staff, starting … Monday … Wendy … [is] Deputy Chief of Staff to Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel and [was] the Chief of Staff to Deputy Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter. … Wendy is also a veteran of the Senate … I would also like to … thank … Justin Antonipillai for serving as my acting chief of staff for the past few months.”

SCARY ANECDOTE OF THE DAY -- WSJ’s Adam Entous and Nicholas Casey: “The Obama administration knew from Palestinian contacts earlier this week that representatives of Israel, Egypt and the Palestinians were working on a new cease-fire proposal but didn't know details because they were left largely out of the discussions. Key American officials said they first heard about the breakthrough from Twitter and the media, rather than from their Israeli or Egyptian counterparts.” http://on.wsj.com/1qZutP4 (h/t Colum Lynch)

SCOOP DU JOUR -- “Clinton pens Gillibrand book intro,” by Maggie Haberman: “Hillary Clinton praises Kirsten Gillibrand as a ‘great senator’ and a ‘great friend’ in a foreword to the New York Democrat’s … memoir [out Sept 9]… The three-page foreword to ‘Off the Sidelines: Raise Your Voice, Change the World’ symbolizes the link between Clinton, who served in the U.S. Senate … through 2008, and Gillibrand, who was appointed to succeed her [in 2009] … ‘The first time I shook Kirsten Gillbrand’s hand, she looked me square in the eyes and said, ‘How can I help?’’ Clinton writes. ‘I was running for Senate.’” http://politi.co/1zZgoSv

HAMPTONS BUZZ --“The Clintons Are Movin' on Down, Slumming It to the Wrong Side of the Tracks,” by Blake Fleetwood in HuffPost: “Bill and Hillary are going to be my neighbors in Amagansett this summer … [T]his year, the power couple has passed up the posh estates of Lilly Pond Lane and the glitter of East Hampton or Southampton for the badlands of Amagansett -- north of the railroad tracks. … [T]he Clintons will be in a ‘modest’ $18 million home … The Clintons will be next door to … Harvey Weinstein … [A] mile away, Alec Baldwin owns a home, and Steven Spielberg has an ocean-front $25 million place.” http://huff.to/1omPNet

MEDIA WATCH -- “Bloomberg’s game change: New York’s in charge,” by Dylan Byers: “[T]he New York powers [at Bloomberg] have wrested control of the steering wheel [on politics coverage] from Washington. On Wednesday night, Al Hunt, the face of Bloomberg’s political coverage for nearly a decade, was informed by Senior Executive Editor Josh Tyrangiel that his weekly public affairs show ‘Political Capital’ would be canceled. The show’s production team would be laid off, as would many of the veteran print journalists Hunt had brought on board over the years. Those jobs would be moving to New York, where Bloomberg is already hard at work on a new show.… Bloomberg is moving aggressively to centralize its political efforts in New York, which is creating anxiety among many in the Washington bureau.” http://politi.co/1AZ93DY

--“The Executive Editor on the Word ‘Torture’,” by NYT’s Dean Bacquet: “Over the past few months, reporters and editors of The Times have debated a subject that has come up regularly ever since the world learned of the C.I.A.’s brutal questioning of terrorism suspects: whether to call the practices torture. When the first revelations emerged a decade ago, the situation was murky. … The Times described what we knew of the program but avoided a label that was still in dispute, instead using terms like harsh or brutal interrogation methods.?… [But now far] more is now understood, such as that the C.I.A. inflicted the suffocation technique called waterboarding 183 times on a single detainee … So from now on, The Times will use the word ‘torture’ to describe incidents in which we know for sure that interrogators inflicted pain on a prisoner in an effort to get information.” http://nyti.ms/1q0pDdR

DEEP DIVE -- "Who is Charlie Crist? The answer is complicated," by Tampa Bay Times' Adam C. Smith and Michael Kruse: "If politics is a series of interactions that ultimately are transactions, means to an end — give me your money, give me your vote — then Crist, say people who like him, and also people who don't, has an undeniable gift. He can walk into a room filled with mostly strangers, and when he leaves, even if it's just an hour later, everybody feels as if they know him. Feels as if he knows them. ... It's all the more remarkable because little else about Crist suggests a logical winner. He was divorced and single for most of his adulthood and has minimal private-sector experience. He has had to address rumors that he's gay. ... And what the 58-year-old St. Petersburg resident is trying to do now should be impossible. ... Polls, though, say Crist has a chance, and a good chance." http://bit.ly/1pgtjMa

**A message from GE: Africa is at a crossroads. Over the past decade and a half, it has emerged as one of the world’s most promising growth regions. To fulfill this promise, Africa will need to remain focused on continuing to improve governance, invest in infrastructure, accelerate trade and strengthen human capital and innovation. Learn more about how GE is powering growth in Africa at Ideas Lab. http://www.ideaslaboratory.com/post/93766775692/betting-on-africas-future **

PRESIDENT OBAMA, speaking from the State Dining Room at 9:30 p.m.: “Good evening. Today I authorized two operations in Iraq -- targeted airstrikes to protect our American personnel, and a humanitarian effort to help save thousands of Iraqi civilians who are trapped on a mountain without food and water and facing almost certain death. … As ISIL has marched across Iraq, it has waged a ruthless campaign against innocent Iraqis. And these terrorists have been especially barbaric towards religious minorities, including Christian and Yezidis, a small and ancient religious sect.

“I’ve said … the United States cannot and should not intervene every time there’s a crisis in the world. So let me be clear about why we must act, and act now. When we face a situation like we do on that mountain -- with innocent people facing the prospect of violence on a horrific scale, when we have a mandate to help -- in this case, a request from the Iraqi government -- and when we have the unique capabilities to help avert a massacre, then I believe the United States of America cannot turn a blind eye.

“We can act, carefully and responsibly, to prevent a potential act of genocide. … Earlier this week, one Iraqi in the area cried to the world, ‘There is no one coming to help.’ Well today, America is coming to help.” Transcripthttp://1.usa.gov/1pG0O9E ... YouTube (8½ min.)http://bit.ly/1u5avTj

GET SMART FAST -- “A friend flees the horror of ISIS,” by The New Yorker’s George Packer: “It’s hard to know what … is left of the humanitarian responsibilities of the international community. The age of intervention is over, killed in large part by the Iraq war. But justifiable skepticism about the use of military force seems also to have killed off the impulse to show solidarity with the helpless victims of atrocities in faraway places. There’s barely any public awareness of the unfolding disaster in northwestern Iraq … Nothing that either side has done in that terrible conflict [Israel-Gaza] comes close to the routine brutality of ISIS.” http://nyr.kr/X6ajpA

VINEYARD INTERRUPTUS – “Obama interrupting summer vacation with trip to DC,” by Julie Pace and Darlene Superville, with Philip Marcelo in Oak Bluffs, Mass.: “Obama is scheduled to arrive [on Martha’s Vineyard] on Saturday and return to Washington a week later, on Sunday, Aug. 17. Plans call for him to return to the Vineyard on Aug. 19 to resume the vacation, which ends five days later on Aug. 24. Spokesman Josh Earnest said Obama will attend ‘in-person meetings’ with White House staff. …

“Obama's public appearances while on vacation typically are limited to stops at local businesses and dinner out … But in another unusual twist this summer, Obama plans to attend a Democratic fundraiser on Martha's Vineyard on Monday. The Obamas stay in Chilmark … and have rented a seven-bedroom, 8,100-square-foot house along the island's Vineyard Sound side, far off any main roads. Obama has vacationed on the quaint island every summer of his presidency except during the 2012 re-election campaign.” http://bit.ly/1kqR3NB

POTUS ON THE LINKS: Escapism or isolationism? --“Our Lonely First Duffer: What Barack Obama’s golf game tells us about his presidency,” by Michael Hirsh, national editor for Politico Magazine: “[T]his weekend … Obama is headed off for another hack-a-thon on Martha’s Vineyard … Though a mediocre golfer, Obama is believed to be an honest scorekeeper … He is also known for maintaining his preternaturally calm demeanor on the course as well as off. ‘I’ve never really seen him in a bad mood,’ frequent Obama golf partner Alonzo Mourning … told my POLITICO colleague Jennifer Epstein in late April …

“[Golf] has become, more and more, Obama’s refuge from public life … Obama himself, who has pretty much given up his first sporting love, basketball, because of a fear of injury (according to Mourning), has said that playing the game is a way ‘to relax and clear my head.’ … What tells us even more about this particular president than … is his routinely narrow choice of playing partners over the past five and a half years. … Golf is … is a game virtually designed for getting to know people and expanding one’s networks …

“In five and a half years of slashing his way through courses from Maryland to Hawaii, the president has managed to turn this most gregarious of games into an intensely private obsession, one he has shared almost entirely with the handful of close friends—many of them old high-school pals from Hawaii … Mostly, he plays with junior White House aides. So Obama spends most of his time with golf partners he … doesn’t have to persuade …

“An exhaustive record of Obama’s every golf game over the past five and a half years compiled by Epstein and … Carrie Budoff Brown, showed that the president’s most frequent partner, by far, has been Marvin Nicholson, the White House trip director (they’ve played together 117 times), followed by David Katz, the 29-year-old White House senior policy adviser for manufacturing, and Eric Whitaker, Obama’s old Chicago friend. Not far behind … is Ben Finkenbinder, a [former] White House press staffer [now at Organizing for America, in Chicago]. …

“Boehner, a total golf geek himself, mocked Obama’s golf-aholicism recently when he said he’d called the president to wish him a happy 53rd birthday: ‘He sends me an email back telling me how good his golf game is’ … It’s fair to question whether his isolationism on the course reflects his entire approach to leadership. … From the time he was a boy, his sense of apartness had bred a hardened self-reliance.” http://politi.co/V3lwWj

THE TEA PARTY AFTER THE PRIMARIES -- “Civil war to rage on,” by Anna Palmer: “The establishment claims it won the 2014 primary season. But maybe not the war. Sen. Lamar Alexander sailed to victory, … completing a near clean sweep for establishment-backed Senate incumbents this fall that has business groups bragging that they beat back the tea party. But when the crowing stops, veteran GOP operatives will find themselves right where they were before: back in hand-to-hand combat with movement conservatives … While individual races were won, the biggest challenge facing Republicans — party unity — is still unresolved …

“[Brian J. Walsh, a Republican consultant who was NRSC communications director last cycle, said]: ‘Right now there is no de facto leader in the party and … the professional conservatives running these organizations recognize there is a lot of money to be made fostering this so-called civil war’ … The U.S. Chamber of Commerce … had a near perfect primary record except in Georgia [Senate] where … Rep. Jack Kingston, lost in a runoff to David Perdue.

“But Big Business’ success in some races hasn’t cowed outside conservative groups, which helped rack up victories against Rep. Ralph Hall in Texas and put Rep. Justin Amash over the edge in Michigan. … Cantor’s stunning defeat by long-shot conservative Dave Brat [bolstered the tea-party groups’ argument] that they are still making an impact. S

“Still, business lobbyists believe that pushing back against the tea party in the field will translate into a better environment in Washington. ‘We’ve moved the gasoline farther away from the fire,’ … said David French of the National Retail Federation.” http://politi.co/1r57Rb5

CLASSIC N.Y. POST COVER, as the tab continues hounding Mayor Bill de Blasio: “BAD OLD DAYS: Squeegee men back … No, it’s not 1990 – it’s this week, as a squeegee man harasses a driver near the Midtown Tunnel, one of several such unwelcome sightings.” Online headline: “Squeegee men are back and terrorizing city streets.” See the cover. http://bit.ly/1sEfVTkRead the story. http://bit.ly/1qZX6vp

SPORTS BLINK – “Landon Donovan to retire at end of MLS season,” by Yahoo Sports’ Martin Rogers: “Los Angeles Galaxy star forward Landon Donovan … will retire from professional soccer at the end of the Major League Soccer season.” http://yhoo.it/1siKKhKRead his letter:http://bit.ly/1utjkDH

DESSERT -- “Prince William Takes New Job as Air Ambulance Helicopter Pilot,” by People’s Simon Perry: “He will join the East Anglian Air Ambulance, his office has confirmed to PEOPLE. Since leaving the RAF at Anglesey, where he was based for more than three years, William, 32, has been eager to get back to flying and is set to complete what officials call ‘a mandatory period of training this autumn and winter.’ He will start work at the area bases at Cambridge and Norwich airports in spring 2015, flying night and day shifts, which will allow for him and wife Kate, also 32, to live primarily at Anmer Hall, their 10-bedroom mansion near Sandringham.” http://bit.ly/1ybXwNc